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On Wednesday August 15, 2012, the Peruvian national soccer team had a friendly match with the Costa Rican national team. The final score was 1-0, with a victory for Peru. For a country used to suffering failures in football, that alone would have been enough news.

However, the real news came the next day. The team was getting ready to board the plane, going through security controls at the San Jose International Airport in Costa Rica with every other passenger on that same flight. They were on their third security check when football player John Galliquio said: “an extra effort and they will find the weapon I'm carrying with me”.

@SELECCION_PERU [es]: A joke that was misinterpreted by the airline and the airport staff generated problems with the national team's returning flight.

This triggered all the alarms at the San Jose International Airport, and an anti-terrorist protocol was activated, as confirmed by Celso Gamboa, Costa Rica Vice Minister of Security. Galliquio was intervened and he was unable to take the flight with the rest of the team. Because of that incident, the flight had a two-hour delay.

John Galliquio, image via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Galliquio arrived to Lima later that same day, and reportedly said [es]: “I apologize with all the people that had to be taken off the plane and for the flight delay. Every day we learn new things in order to avoid the same mistakes. It's over now and there is nothing else to say. Everything is all right”.

But apparently there was more to be said. There were reactions, both locally and abroad.

We were joking. I said (about Galliquio): ‘He is the one with the drugs’, and I didn't think they would be that strict”, said Paolo Guerrero at Jorge Chávez Airport [in Lima]. “Hopefully, he will return safely”, the Peruvian captain added.

The incident hit the news abroad too.

In Argentina, Perfil [es] reported that as soon as Galliquio told his joke anti-terrorist alarms were activated at the San Jose International Airport in Costa Rica at 11.30 am on Thursday. In Spain, sports newspaper Marca [es] wrote that this event kept Galliquio in Costa Rican territory, where he was interrogated by the General Attorney. Sports newspaper La Nación – Puro Deporte [es], from Costa Rica, informed that Galliquio caused chaos at the airport as his team was about to leave the country.

Peruvian football player […] was detained on his flight back to his country after a match in Costa Rica (1:0) at the Central American city airport. According to Peruvian football authorities, it was due to the “witty” comment he made during the security checkpoints.